Education

The first seperate department for education was created in 1910 to look after the education in India. But it was after India achieved its Independence on 15th August 1947. A full fledged Ministry of Education was established on 29th August 1947. The nomenclature and responsibilities of the Education Department has undergone some changes since Independence. The present Department of Education is one of the four constitutent departments of the Ministry of Human Resource Development which was created on 26th September, 1985. Education has been in prime focus throughout India's development plans. Its importance can be gauged from the fact that it is included as a part of the Directive Principles of State Policy in the Constitution, which states that " the State shall endeavour to provide within a period of ten years from the commencement of this Constitution, for free and compulsory education for all children until they complete the age of fourteen years". Educational policy and progress are reviewed in the light of the goal of national development and priorities set from time to time. The National Policy on Educatuion was formulated in 1982, and was later updated in 1992, where specific responsibilities for organising, implementing and financing its proposals were assigned. The total budgetary expenditure on Education by the Education Departments of the Centre and States has increased from Rs. 644.6 millions in 1951-52 to Rs. 300,000 millions in 1995-96. There are, at present 130 plan schemes in the Department with a total Eighth Plan outlay of Rs. 74430 Millions. The state of political and economic affairs too are responsible for determinig the educational policy. For example, in the second five year plan (1956-60) when heavy industries became the basic industries, the socialistic education was given and was put emphasis on conversion of basic education and secondary and higher educations. Also, when India saw the economic crisis and the school attendance rate fell in 1960's a big reconsideration on the whole education was done establishing the advisory committee including foreigners. Today the system which was decided by the international conference party is revolved. It has 10-2-3 system and in some states it has 5-3-2 system or 4-3-3 system. The elemtary education is divided into the first term and the latter term. The secondary education is divided to the first term and the latter term, and the first term is for studying the extention of elementary education and the latter term is divided into the college entering course and vocational education course to study. It is the characteristic that scientific education and talent education are done. The rate of the students to enter the first term is 24.6%. For the higher education, 137 higher educational systems aim at the improvement of the qualities of education and research in scientific technology.